New Industry Campaign Stresses Value of Meetings

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Cvent Staff

Just under a year ago the meetings industry got Meetings Mean Business, a grassroots campaign to protect the millions of American jobs that depend on business meetings and events. Now, nine industry associations have come together to launch a new campaign: “FACE TIME. It Matters.“

Lead by the Convention Industry Council, the new marketing campaign will promote not just the business value but also the human value of face-to-face meetings and events.

“The FACE TIME campaign will bring home the critical “human side” of the meetings value equation. When combined with our ‘Meetings Mean Business’ effort and Oxford Economics compelling findings on the positive financial return from meetings, it becomes crystal clear how important meetings are to talent growth, business development and the economic vitality of our communities,” said Roger Dow, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Travel Association, in a statement.

When it comes to the benefits of live events, recent focus groups and in-depth interviews conducted by Ypartnership with some of the industry’s leading executives found that:

• Face-to-face meetings build trust and relationships
• Education and training are more effective in a live setting
• Live meetings actually save time and money
• Live meetings result in a more effective exchange of ideas
• Face-to-face meetings provide the human connection that powers business

To learn more about the campaign and access tools for spreading the word on the benefits of live events, visit facetimeitmatters.org.

Emotions, emotions, emotions

Ohio AEYC has graciously invited me to share my knowledge and expertise with the Ohio early childhood community. I am always excited to be able to talk to educators of young children, and their supervisors specifically on the topic of how our own emotions and biases affect our interactions with children and families. Teachers face emotional conflict within themselves from moment to moment when working with young children. Especially with children’s behaviors that present a challenge for us. I know this because I was a teacher of young children for 15 years!

Our own emotional memory gets in the way! It is not always about the child as it is about you and your own emotions – how you learned to express them as a child, how the adults around you responded and how all that is a part of you today. In my presentations, I use a personal and practical approach to get in touch with your own emotions so you can better help children with theirs. I hope to help us all embark, or continue, on a journey toward self-understanding that will reflect positively on our interactions with all young children in our life. Much of this is based on my book:Don’t Get So Upset! Help Young Children Manage Their Feelings By Understanding Your Own.

My second presentation for this conference is about using dolls to support children’s social-emotional development. More talk about emotions! However, this time it is helping children with theirs! I will share with teachers an approach that will help children understand and cope with everyday events and stressful situations. As teachers learn to tell the doll’s stories or speak for the dolls they model dramatic play skills. They represent each situation through a three-dimensional display using culturally appropriate dolls, props, and a written sign that describes the situation from the doll’s perspective. During the group discussion about the doll’s situation, children practice solving problems. They relate their real-world experiences to the imaginary circumstances of the dolls. They identify with the dolls and learn empathy. Indeed, the doll becomes a symbolic classmate who inspires the children to share ideas and feelings that they might otherwise not be comfortable expressing.

I look forward to meeting many of you on April 29.  Although I have traveled extensively in the United States, and around the world, I have never been to Columbus, Ohio! So, I am looking forward to seeing a new place too.

Thanks so much to the organizers of this conference to invite me to post this piece. I love blogging!

For those of you who are interested, I write my own blog called: Mining Nuggets: The Ramblings and Reflections of a 60 year old Zimraelican.

See you soon!

It takes a village…

I do understand the challenges that a center faces when trying to find the necessary resources to support staff in attending a state conference.  Previous to working for Ohio AEYC, I was a center director for twenty years.  I was confronted with the realities of balancing a budget that was short on training funds and maneuvering through the complexities of how to staff the center so that my teachers could attend training.   The value and benefits of teachers attending the conference ranked high on our list of priorities.  We all felt that professional development was a necessary ingredient to the quality of care we were committed to providing. 

So our work began.  We met with the teaching staff and developed a plan that involved educating and recruiting the support of all members of our “village”.  We decided to share our desires for training with the parents and provide them with the direct benefits it would have on their children.  We made the commitment to bring back fresh ideas and current research from the field that we could put into classroom practice.    We thought of creative ways we could document our conference experience to share with the parents, such as making a video to bring back and play in our entry way.  Additionally, we distributed a letter to all the center parents.  With the support of our board of directors, we presented a letter on their behalf asking families what they thought they could do to assist and support us with obtaining our goal. We wanted to send as many teachers to the conference as financially possible without closing the center.  We asked them to consider the following:

• Find alternative child care for the day. (Plan a special “at home-day”)
• Volunteer to care for their child and other classmates in their home
• Sponsor a teacher to attend with a donation
• Pick up their child(ren) early on Friday
• Volunteer at the center

The tradition began many moons ago with great success.  As it turned out, the Village was more than willing to help out and lend the support needed.  In fact, we were a center licensed to care for over a 100 children and on conference Friday (back in April of 1998), we had 7 children attend.  Three of the children belonged to a staff member who was attending the Ohio AEYC Conference.   I must admit too much time has passed to recall the amount of funds that were raised.  Well, it must have been adequate! 

Recently I asked the center to give me an update on how the Village is doing.  The director, Sherry Roush was proud to report, “ Typically, parents make other arrangements for 70% of our children that day!”

I hope this idea can help you support your staff in attending the conference. And we would love to hear some ideas that worked in your village.

Welcome to the 2010 Ohio Early Care and Education Conference Blog

Welcome all to the 2010 Ohio Early Care and Education Blog. Thanks for  checking it out.
Our Blog will offer conference attendees (and hopefully those who are not sure about registering for the conference – YET)  information that you won’t find on our registration site.  There will be a plethora of postings (which we hope you will contribute to as well).  anything from speakers contributing about their sessions to what to expect as first time attendee, restaurant recommendations, where to park, etc.
We would love to have you join us by commenting on any of our posts.
Talk to you soon Ohio Early Care and Education Conference attendees!
Amy Eldridge
Events Director

Underpaid early childhood professionals: Finding the path to better pay

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) NAEYC Radio presents…Underpaid early childhood professionals: Finding the path to better pay http://www.naeyc.org/newsroom/NAEYCradio . A teacher in a preschool with a bachelors degree typically earns $10-15k less a year than a kindergarten teacher with similar preparations.  This segment discusses new insights and developments that may drive increased salaries for early childhood workers and identifies some steps individuals can take to secure better pay. Join NAEYC Executive Director, Mark Ginsberg and Rae Pica with Dr. Marcy Whitebook.  Dr. Whitebook, Ph.D, directs the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University at Berkeley, which focuses its research and policy analysis on the relationship between the adult work environment and effective teaching practices, and data systems for tracking the characteristics of and investments in the early childhood workforce.

I Can’t Believe You Said Yes… by Steve Spangler

When Amy called and asked if I would come back to the amazing Ohio Early Care and Education conference, I couldn’t believe it. What… the people in the front row didn’t get enough Diet Coke splashed all over their clothes the last time I was there? Maybe someone didn’t quite hear the kaboom or didn’t get hit in the head with a giant balloon. Or maybe… just maybe… the message worked and the early childhood professional in Ohio are ready for more. If that’s the case (okay, I already found out that it is) I’m so excited to get to keynote your conference.

Lots of things have happened since the I last visited your conference in 2007. Ellen DeGeneres got hooked on science and invited me to use her resources to share some larger scale demonstrations. If you missed what happened when we mixed 2,500 boxes of cornstarch with a garden hose in a hot tub, .

I discovered the police in Colorado also like to do science… and that’s good news because otherwise I’d be writing you from a small room with bars. Missed it? Check this out: 

Oh, and then there was that time last May when 7,000 kids showed up for the World’s Largest Physics Demonstration at Coors Field. The nice people at Guinness World Records awarded showed up and even had a plaque on hand for a new record.

But something far more meaningful happened over the last three years… I discovered the elements of science – wonder, discover and exploration – are universal truths no matter your age, your color or your background. Our children have a need to find out more about their world and how it works. Our children believe anything is possible… until we impose our boundaries on their dreams. And I learned that teachers need professional staff development, support and encouragement to keep hitting home run every day. As professional educators, we need experiences like the ones Ohio AEYC offers.

I can’t wait to see you this at the end of April. I have some new tricks up my sleeve… and few classics… and some ideas to make us all more effective leaders in education.

—Steve

P.S. I dare you to sit in the front row!

Beyond the Fizz – follow up from Steve Spanglers entry

Thanks Steve – It looks like you have been very busy since we saw you in Ohio in 2007.  We are very excited to have you back.  We received rave reviews from our attendees and knew you would be visiting us again someday!  And here you are back in the buckeye state 3 years later.  I can’t wait to see what you have in store for us this time. I’m not sure if you will see me in the front row though!

Even though we received great reviews back in 2007 we also received a few that questioned the validity of Steve’s keynote.  Are children really learning anything about science or are all of his experiments just fun for children?  I was pleasantly pleased to find an article in July, 2009 Young Children that answered this very question.  The title of the article is Beyond the Fizz Getting Children Excited about Doing Real Science.  Click here to read the article.

Can children have fun and learn about science at the same time?  I tend to believe that is exactly what Steve’s motivation is.  Even though most of Steve’s experiments are on a rather large scale almost everything can be done on a much smaller scale and budget – for example:

Until next time… Happy Blogging!  :0)